The classical pragmatists

Peirce

The pragmaticphilosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce was part of a more general theory of thought and of signs. Thought, or “inquiry,” results from doubt, a state in which habitual actions are blocked or confused and from which organic irritation and irresolution result. Resolution and unobstructed conduct, on the other hand, are products of belief, which is a form of stability and satisfaction. It is the function of scientific thought to produce true beliefs. In a prolonged effort to embed this analysis of doubt and inquiry within a more comprehensive theory of signs in which communication, thought, knowledge, and intelligent conduct could be fully understood, Peirce achieved a wealth of original insights. A sign, for Peirce, is a way by which something (a thought, word, or object) refers the interpreter to something else (the interpretant), which, in turn, is itself another sign. Peirce’s pragmatism is thus a method for translating certain kinds of signs into clearer signs in order to surmount linguistic or conceptual confusion. Getting at the interpretant involves determining the “effects,” or consequences, of the signs or ideas in question.

Peirce’s pragmatism is therefore primarily a theory of meaning that emerged from his first-hand reflections on his own scientific work, in which the experimentalist understands a proposition as meaning that, if a prescribed experiment is performed, a stated experience will result. The method has two different uses. First, it is a way of showing that when disputes permit no resolution, the difficulties are due to misuses of language, to subtle conceptual confusions. Such questions as whether the physical world is an illusion, whether the individual’s senses always mislead him, or whether his actions are fated are not “real” problems.

The method may also be employed for clarification. As Peirce wrote:

Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

To say, for example, that an object O is hard means that if the operation of scratching O were to be performed, O would not be scratched by most substances. One thus achieves clarity when one can supply a conditional statement of this kind.

According to Peirce, to say that a belief is true is to say that, if a certain operation is the subject of continuous scientific inquiry by the community of investigators, assent to the belief would increase and dissent decrease “in the infinite long run.” Consequently, not only is thought purposive, but meaning carries a reference to the future. Peirce’s concept of the community of sign users and inquirers also has social and moral relevance, for it is nothing less than the ideal of rational democracy.

Witnessing his doctrine undergo a medley of dubious interpretations, Peirce eventually dissociated himself from them by calling his own view “pragmaticism,” a term he called so ugly as to be safe from uninformed use. Key dimensions of Peirce’s logical pragmatism were developed by James, Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and C.I. Lewis.

James’s pragmatism took a psychological and moral approach largely unforeseen by Peirce. A basic difference between Peirce and James is discernible in their respective conceptions of the direction to be taken by pragmatic analysis. While Peirce examined meaning in general, conditional schema, and interpretants, James focused upon the distinct contributions that ideas and beliefs make to specific forms of human experience on the living level of practical wants and purposes.

The most conspicuous feature of James’s writings on pragmatism is the dominant place given to considerations of value, worth, and satisfaction—consequences of his teleological (purposive) conception of mind (as in his Principles of Psychology [1890]). James maintained that thought is adaptive and purposive but also suffused with ideal emotional and practical interests—“should-bes”—which, as conditions of action, work to transform the world and create the future. Consequently, truth and meaning are species of value: “The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.”

James took meaning to be an intimate part of the use of ideas for expediting action. The notion of the difference that a proposition makes in experience was fundamental to James’s pragmatic methodology. He remarked that “it is a good rule in physiology, when we are studying the meaning of an organ,” to look to the specific function that it performs. In like manner, the special difference that the presence of mind makes in observable cases, reflected in its unique functioning, defines the use of “mind”; “In particular, the pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment are thus the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality.”

With his training in medicine and psychology and the influence of Charles Darwin in the background, James considered that the main function of thought is to help people establish “satisfactory relations with our surroundings.” Thus, individuals help to mold the character of reality according to their needs and desires. Indeed, this is fundamental in James’s defense of the right to believe in his famous essay “The Will to Believe” (1897). James argued that one may have a reasonable right to hold a religious or metaphysical belief (e.g., that there is a perfect, eternal, and personal aspect of the universe) when the belief in question would supply a vital psychological and moral benefit to the believer, when evidence for and against the belief is equal, and when the decision to believe is forced and momentous. In James’s functional conception of truth, the “working,” and hence the truth, of ideas is their role in opening up valuable possible directions of thought and action—“a leading that is worth while.”

Dewey once noted that “Peirce wrote as a logician and James as a humanist.” This distinction characterizes not only the course of pragmatism but also the shaping of Dewey’s own thought. Dewey first felt the influence of James in the 1890s, during the period in which he was struggling to free himself from the hold of Hegelian idealism. Later he recognized the value of Peirce’s work, which clearly prefigured certain ideas that he had developed independently.

With indefatigable effort and care, Dewey reformulated pragmatism, critically readjusting some of its conflicting doctrines, drawing upon his own work in psychology and education, and finding stimulation in the social pragmatism of his friend Mead. The resulting construction was instrumentalism, which Dewey conceived as a single coherent theory embracing both the logical and humanistic currents of pragmatism and thus integrating the methods and conclusions of scientific knowledge with beliefs about values and purposes.

While scientific, moral, and social experiences may differ in subject matter, the method of thought functioning “in the experimental determinations of future consequences” remains the same for all inquiry. Initially provoked by doubtful or problematic conditions, intelligent conduct is addressed to a resolution and settling of these conditions and to a “warranted assertion”—Dewey’s version of “truth.” Such is the “mediative function” of reason. “Truth” is thus identified with the outcome of competent inquiry. Actions occurring on the organic level, if they be at first confused and obstructed, can become organized, coherent, and liberated through such inquiry.

Dewey’s analysis of the organic, cultural, and formal conditions of intelligent action implies that all reflective conduct issues in an evaluation of a situation with respect to future action and consequences; thus, inquiry is essentially an evaluative procedure. This method, most impressively applied in the sciences, is nonetheless a paradigm of moral activity as well. In ethics, “the action needed to satisfy” the situation is not to be found simply by the application of moral codes. The meaning

has to be searched for [since] there are conflicting desires and alternative apparent goods.…Hence inquiry is exacted.…The good of the situation has to be discovered, projected and attained on the basis of the exact defect and trouble to be rectified.

In general, according to instrumentalism, moral ideals and “ends” function as means and hypotheses in guiding the deliberative process directed to controlling experience and attaining future goods.

Not health as an end fixed once for all, but the needed improvement in health—a continual process—is the end and good.…Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim of living.…Growth itself is the only moral “end.”

Inquiry possessed a genuine religious significance for Dewey, and in its functioning as a critical, self-corrective social process of human growth, he envisaged the working ethic of democracy.

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